


What You Are Made Of

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 05:37:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1254919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You have never been to Japan, Mako Mori. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Are Made Of

**Author's Note:**

> This is an incredibly self-indulgent Pacific Rim AU that should have been beaten into shape and/or received the Britpicking of a lifetime and/or been rewritten after actual research into how the Met police force works. None of those things happened. :D
> 
> If you are screening for triggers of any kind, this is absolutely, absolutely not the fic for you.

One rainy night, when you can’t talk, when you can’t think, when you are tired in mind and body and soul, you walk to the Cineworld at Piccadilly Circus. You buy a ticket from a machine so that you can avoid talking to anyone, and you walk into the theater without knowing what it is or what time it starts. The only other people at the showing are an old man in the front and two teenagers in the far back. You sit down in the middle of the middle row, and you fall asleep in your wet coat. Your umbrella is across your knees; your purse is still looped over your shoulder.

When you open your eyes, the lights are on, and people are sweeping up. They probably tried to wake you, but you slept through it, and you feel a little embarrassed: you stand up, gather your things, check that your purse is still over your shoulder. You walk straight out of the movie theater, go through St. James Park at eleven thirty at night, rain still coming down, the bare trees black against the light pollution in the sky. You keep hands in your pockets, and you keep going. 

At the gate, the night guard smiles at you. He recognizes you, but you scan your ID anyways, so that he won’t get in trouble. In the lab, you hang up your wet things and put away your umbrella and go back to work. You’ve worked twenty hours straight already, and you’ll work another six alone, in the dark except for the glow of the three screens arranged around you.

To this day, you have no idea what movie you slept through, Mako Mori. Something about giant robots? Monsters from under the sea?

…

You have never been to Japan, Mako Mori. 

Nevertheless, there are terrible things in your nightmares: when you were very young, Stacker Pentecost found you behind a dumpster, sobbing. You were only wearing one shoe, and slowly, carefully, he coaxed out of the trash-filled crevice you’d stuffed yourself into. Only later did you realize what happened: Stacker arrived on the scene and saw the shoe left behind at the scene. There had been a child at the scene, he insisted, and he went looking: Mr. Pentecost tried to coax your arms away from his neck long enough for the paramedics to look at you, but you were inconsolable. You refused to let go of him and turned your face into his neck. He went on rubbing your back. 

You speak English as your mother tongue, having been born in SW16, having taken a prize in it two weeks before at Penwortham Primary, and you were terrified. You were young. You didn't want to let go of him. The world was a blur of light and movement and fear; you wanted only the broad hand on your back and the deep, soothing voice. If he let go, what would happen? The world might dissolve into blood and fear. 

In a way, ever since, you’ve never let go of him. 

He has never let go of you. 

…

Newt comes in at seven o’ clock the next morning, and he finds you asleep with your head on your arms.

"Hey," he says, shaking you awake more gently than otherwise expected from an excitable American who has a portrait of the Kray twins tattooed on his right forearm. "Wake up. It’s done."

You straighten, blink to make your eyes focus, and you see that Newt is right. 

"Do we have him?" Gottlieb is there, too, coming in the back and making coffee.

You yawn and hit a button on the keyboard.

You do have him. Fifteen minutes later, you and Newt and Gottlieb are in front of the team lead explaining how your rewritten processing algorithm combined with Gottlieb’s optical modeling and Newt’s biometric analysis has assembled a life-size, three-dimensional image of the man responsible for a vicious knife assault on three primary school students near Mile End. 

…

Every Sunday, rain, shine, high-pressure caseload, detective sergeants showing up at your desk and roaring at Gottlieb until you throw them out -- none of it matters.

This Sunday, the sky is gray, sprinkling a little, and you struggle up two flights of stairs with bags of groceries. Years ago, in one of the waves of rebuilding, when it was still at least a little cheap, Stacker bought in Deptford. Two bedroom flat, round windows that you had loved but look odd now, and the windows in the so-called reception room point towards Canary Wharf. You let yourself in; you can hear Mr. Hansen and Mr. Pentecost talking in the bedroom, so you call out, then go on through to the kitchen. Somebody is already there: male, six foot, but looking even bigger because of his shoulders. He is doing dishes, shirt rolled up to the elbows, and he looks at you. In response, you lean up on your toes, hand on his shoulder, and when he doesn’t pull away, you kiss him on the cheek. He lets you, and for a moment, you breathe in the smell of his skin, his shampoo, the feel of his body next to you. His cheek is a little rough with stubble that looks red in certain lights.

A few minutes later, when his father comes through the kitchen door, Chuck steps backwards, and wordlessly, you let go. He goes back to washing dishes, and you put on an apron to cut up vegetables for the fry-up. 

It’s the three of you in a kitchen in the late morning light. Mr. Hansen puts on the radio. Chuck continues to do dishes. You cook. After a while, Stacker comes into the kitchen and sits down across from Mr. Hansen. You turn to smile at him, and he smiles back at you: a part of you that had been tight relaxes, and with the radio on, with you standing next to Chuck, Mr. Hansen starts frying sausages. Tight quarters all around, but also eggs. Tomatoes. 

You and Chuck elbow bump elbows while you're cutting up mushrooms and he is drying the last of the plates. 

…

Chuck’s father worked with your father. Chuck himself is a remarkably young DI on the make, moving from success to success, and at twenty-five, you are not the titular head, but neither Newt nor Gottlieb have any leadership capacity whatsoever, and everyone knows where the power lies. You run a cutting-edge interdisciplinary forensic unit that synthesizes data and math and biology to produce results that feel like science fiction.

Your adoptive father, Stacker Pentecost, sitting at the head of the table with Mr. Hansen on his right and you on his left. 

All of you are Scotland Yard. You and Chuck think of yourselves, you know, as second generation. 

…

Here is someone who is not second generation Scotland Yard: the man you actually dating. He is blond, blue-eyed, and square-shouldered. His dad was an American with an embassy job that took them all over, and when the marriage broke up, his mother brought him and his brother and his sister back to England. It was where she grew up; it was where she’d been happiest. A simple, uncomplicated solution only on the face of it, but as far as you can tell, Raleigh is genuinely a simple, uncomplicated boy. For him, you break your rule about dating people who, for their jobs, also look at crime scene photographs.

He takes you out to an Italian restaurant in Soho with glass fruit in the window, and you stay with him all weekend, reading the newspaper while he watches the North London derby on the television. You wear his sweaters and not much else. Late breakfast is coffee and pastries from the place run by a Turkish family around the block, and he spends most of Saturday night going down on you on the couch. On Sunday morning, you kiss him on the forehead and slip back to your place, so that you can shower and change before going to Sunday breakfast. 

Raleigh Becket is twenty-seven years old and a constable. You meet him when a bored detective sergeant brings around the season's fresh crop of constables on their first tour of the building, and there he is, standing at the back of the ground, at least a good half-decade older than all the fresh-faced children around him. 

…

A week later, he comes over to your place for the first time. The two of you are supposed to go out to dinner again, and you were running late, so he comes over and sits in the front room of your converted terrace flat while you finish dressing. 

It had been a spot-of-the-moment kind of thing: before lunch, Hansen had come by to talk about some work that you and the boys were doing for him about expensive cars being stolen straight out of the even more expensive garages in Highgate. Chuck was in a foul mood because he didn't want to be working the car theft, even on special assignment, no matter what cabinet minister's wife's Range Rover had gone missing, and the numbers had suggested things were uglier and bigger than previously imagined, and he'd been brought one of the auto-theft DS's so that he could delegate and the DS had brought one of his new young constables to carry boxes. Unwisely, Raleigh made a suggestion, and Chuck turned on his heel and asked in a tone of voice that -- well, a tone of voice that surprised you, on multiple levels. It still makes you angry when you think about it, so you push it out of your mind. You'll think about it later. 

After all, in the present, Raleigh is sitting in your front room, studying the collection of Japanese teapots you have on the mantle of the blocked-up fireplace. 

Then:

"Hello there," you hear him say, softly. You stick your head out. 

"Is the cat bothering you?"

"She’s lovely," he says, sounding sincere. "What’s her name?." 

"Danger," you say, and watch, in amazement, as your shy street-rescue not only comes out from hiding underneath the ottoman, but comes sauntering over, tail high and slightly curved. She rubs against his knee, purring loud enough for you to hear her across the room — granted, it’s a small room. 

"Looks just like a cat I had years ago," he says, bending down to run his hand down her back. Then, still half leaning, he looks at you, half-dressed to go out.

You watch the most extraordinary half-smile appear on his face. 

"You look good," he says, still smiling. 

The two of you never make it out the door.

Later, curled up around him in bed, with rain coming down on the windows and traffic rattling past and your chin tucked against his bare shoulder, Raleigh is half-asleep. Being what he is, being who he is, though: ”When you were angry this morning, you called DI Hansen _Chuck_.”

"His first name is Charles," you say, softly. ”Nickname.” 

Raleigh digests this.

"Funny nickname," Raleigh says, and you kiss him on the jaw. It’s been a long day, and he actually falls asleep before he can follow up: you watch the shadows and light made on Raleigh’s shoulders by the streetlight and the rain on the window. 

You’ve known Chuck since he was a skinny half-Australian, half-American nine year old who landed in London. He has known you since you were a skinny orphan who didn't talk. 

…

Here is another story you think about from time to time, though never in the context of telling Raleigh: ten years or so ago, Herc Hansen walked in on his brother sodomizing an eleven year old Charles Hansen. It had been going on for a long time, apparently, with Scott keeping Chuck quiet by asking him what he thought would happen if Chuck told anyone. Nothing good, right? Dad would get angry, right? Mum would cry, wouldn’t she? But one rainy autumn afternoon, Herc came off shift early and came back to the flat to find his brother on top of his son, and Herc almost beat his brother to death, right there, right then, with his bare hands. 

You know about this because after the beating, Chuck’s father called your father. You and Mr. Pentecost had been out running errands, the post office, the druggist. You remember the way Mr. Pentecost’s face had gone flat when he picked up the phone. ”I’ve got Mako with me,” he said. Then, he looked at you. ”Come along.” 

You went with him over to the Hansens’, but Mr. Pentecost told you to stay out in the hallway. Chuck would come out in a moment: after a moment, Chuck did come out, white, pale, dressed in his uniform from school, which was -- odd. You remember thinking that it was odd, and there was yelling inside the flat, Chuck’s father, Chuck’s mother, a voice that sounded familiar but oddly blurred. Mr. Pentecost, still wearing his coat, came out onto the landing, his face set in a way that made you blink. There was a smear of blood on the right cuff of his coat. 

"You have your Oyster cards?" Mr. Pentecost asked. You had yours; Chuck didn’t have his, so Mr. Pentecost reached into his pocket and put cash into Chuck’s hand. Chuck looked down at it for a long moment, then up at your father with an expression you didn’t quite understand, but somehow hurt your heart, and you touched Chuck at the elbow, gently, to let him know that you were there for him. 

Mr. Pentecost turned to you. ”Go back to our place. Lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone but me.” 

So the two of you took the underground, then the DLR, then walked together, then locked every door in the house. The two of you ate food out of the refrigerator, and then, you did homework while Chuck watched television. After that, you brushed your teeth and washed your face and went to bed. More accurately, you brushed your teeth and washed your face, and Chuck stood outside the bathroom door, not quite willing to be alone. When you came out of the bathroom, wearing pajamas, he told you what his uncle had been doing to him. You cried. Reluctantly, as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed to, Chuck cried, too. You told him that he still had a little bit of blood on his neck and chin. What was that from? His father hitting his uncle, Chuck said, and you got the washcloth wet again and wiped it off.

Then, you lie down in bed, and eventually, you fell asleep. Chuck doesn’t: he stretches out on the floor next to you while still wearing his school clothes. He lies awake and stares at the postcards you’d put up from Aunt Luna, who traveled the world. She was ex-RAF and had gotten a job being a commercial pilot for British Airways.

…

Guilt, anger, shame: more guilt. Mrs. Hansen left and went back to America when Chuck was thirteen. As far as you know, she is still alive, still sending her grown son birthday and Christmas cards, and Chuck has never forgiven either himself or his father for the divorce. Neither Chuck nor his father have ever talked about what happened to his uncle, though you know there was no trial. 

Still: at twenty-five, Chuck is the same rank that his father was at thirty-six.

…

A decade later, you curl yourself more tightly around Raleigh’s warm body. You’re in Camden; you rent a converted terrace one-bedroom flat that you pay an inordinate amount of money for, but you like living alone. You like being close to work. On the other hand: you still don’t have hot water half the time. Also: you still have to set mouse traps in the kitchen. For an animal that made her living on the street at one point, Danger is a supremely indifferent to mice. She has an excellent sense of time, though: at six o’ clock, she decides that she has been ignored long enough and starts explaining, at length, at volume, that she is owed breakfast. 

You get up and feed her, and when you’re trying to decide whether you’re up or down or sideways, you realize Raleigh is up, too. He is leaning against the door frame. ”What were you dreaming about last night?” he asks. 

The kitchen has an uneven floor and one tiny window that resists your efforts to de-grime it. You look up, surprised, then look back down because Danger is making remarkably disgusting noises while bolting her breakfast, and to figure out what to say to Raleigh, you bend down and start to stroke Danger. She is warm and soft under your hand and greedy for chicken-flavored kibble.

Still: deep cold water. Robots. Monsters that spat blue acid and blotted out the sky. Chuck, looking much the same in your dreams as he does in real life, but wearing dull green armor with white marks at the left shoulder and a picture of a bulldog on his right. 

Mr. Hansen looks tired to the marrow of his bones.

...

"Alaska?" Raleigh smiles. "We lived in America for a few years, but around Boston. In the summers, Mum took us up to Pemaquid in Maine." 

The two of you are in a wine bar near Mornington Crescent, pressed in close to each other in the back. The bar is crowded, a jazz band is playing in the front, and you slide closer to Raleigh on the banquette, breathing in the way he smells like your soap and your shower and your apartment. You lean your head against his shoulder. He settles his arm around you, and when the two of you are back in the street after the end of the set, the air clear and cold, you tell him about the dreams you've been having. 

"All the time?" he says. 

"All the ones I can remember." 

The two of you walk home, a little tipsy, holding hands. It's an early night, all things considered, because there is a briefing scheduled for seven in the morning: overtime, Chuck getting authorization for overtime, and consequently, Raleigh's mobile goes off at five-thirty. He makes a noise, then rolls over and shuts it off and lies on his back for a while, breathing shallowly. Then, in the half-dark from the street lamps, you see him sit up, then reach for the gym bag of clothes. It's still pitch-black outside.

"Go back to sleep," he says. "I'll let myself out."

"No, turn on the lights," you reply, sitting up and rubbing your eyes. "I'm going in, too."

Raleigh blinks at you, but doesn't question it. You shower, and he gets dressed, and the two of you walk down to the Underground together, not quite holding hands, but at least shoulder to shoulder. 

...

On Friday, you work from six in the morning until five forty-five, when Raleigh texts you to say that he's at the wine bar and doesn't see you. 

... 

On Saturday, you arrive before six-thirty, rub your eyes, and sit down in front of the screens. You wake on Sunday at ten thirty in the morning, and you panic. You accidentally spill the mug of cold tea by your wrist, and have to spend eight precious minutes sweeping up the broken glass and using paper towels to mop up the liquid. You cut your thumb and bite it to keep the blood from running over your wrist. It opens up again in the kitchen while you are trying to cut up mushrooms, and Stacker sees you looking down, torn between getting it taken care of and not wanting to be any later with breakfast than you are. 

"Miss Mori," he says, softly. 

The two of you sit down at the dining room table, and he gets out his glasses and opens the first aid kit. 

"Single incised wound. No surrounding abrasions, depth of wound less than length. You think I'll get time-and-a-half on this?" 

It's an old joke, and you laugh in spite of yourself, Stacker leans over and kisses you on the forehead. You let out a shaky breath, and Stacker sits down, smiling softly, and that Sunday morning, it's just the two of you. Stacker puts on his coat, and the two of you walk to the closest greasy spoon and trade newspapers over fry-ups. He sighs over the Arsenal; you give him the carbonized black pudding off your plate. 

...

Here is a memory: you are eight years old, sitting in Regents Park under a flowering rowan on a Friday afternoon. Stacker is solemnly eating an an onigiri that you packed that morning, and you ask if he is thirsty. He says he is, so you go to the backpack he had been carrying and get out two thermoses, one of tea for him, one of Ribena for you. There are flower petals on the ground, and your face feels stiff from crying with the child psychologist, but you eat and drink, and when you start crying again, instead of trying to get you to stop or bundling you up and taking you home as soon as possible, Stacker arranges his coat over you, so that you can let your shoulders heave in peace. The coat smells like him; he holds your hand underneath the coat. You fall asleep. 

Here is a memory: you are twenty-two years old, and you're huddled under a pile of blankets in your studio flat. It's a sunny day after exams, after the posting of results, beautiful outside, Stacker took the train down specially to see you, but you have a post-exam cold that makes you feel drained even when standing in sunlight and has kept you under an electrical blanket with a hot water bottle for days, and when you ask Stacker what he would like to do for lunch, you sneeze, miserably. He laughs and sits down in the chair next to your bed and touches, gently, your shoulder, then your cheek under the blanket you have pulled up over you. He smiles, and he doesn't need to say anything else: you feel warmth in your chest. He is so proud of you -- his girl, a double-starred first at Cambridge. 

He goes to the Sainsbury's and brings back soup and soft bread for you, a cheese and bacon sandwich for himself. The only time you want milk in your tea is when he makes it; you watch, a little dazed from fever and medication, while he moves around your little flat, filling up the kettle, getting the milk that he knew to buy, finding the a few sugar packets in a kitchen drawer. 

"Miss Mori," he says, handing you a mug. 

"Mr. Pentecost," you say back to him, and you drink half of your mug. 

He pulls the chair from your desk up to your bed, asks if he can put the wireless on. He does, and you fall asleep with your father sitting next to your bed, feet propped up next to yours, eating his sandwich, listening to the match on Radio 5. As you are feeling asleep, he takes the mug from your hand and puts it somewhere safe: all of these things have something to do with the fact that when you were seven years old, your -- 

...

On Sunday, you panic because you cut your finger open on a broken mug because you think you'll be late going home for Sunday breakfast. There isn't a set time for arriving, and nobody else is going to be there, because Chuck is on his theft case and Mr. Hansen is in Norfolk on a suspected kidnapping, but you're kneeling on the floor, choked with panic and fear and regret and guilt. Some of the pieces of mug that you put into the rubbish bin have blood smeared on them. 

On Wednesday, you get a text from Mr. Hansen, saying that today's dose was white cell boosters. It's bad, and he has to leave because there's been movement in his case. Can you come? 

You walk out of a meeting while a DCI is in mid-sentence. 

...

"I've never even been to Japan," you explain. 

...

Stacker has brain cancer. He is a medical leave for it; you run up the stairs, two at a time, breathless, and Mr. Hansen meets you at the door. His face is tight with anxiety, partially for his case, partially for Stacker, so he gives you the situation in a few words: nausea, low-grade fever, more nausea. Deep pain in the bones. He needs someone to bring him hot water bottles and help him vomit and bring him water. Also, call emergency services if anything worse than that happens. You're getting out of your coat and drop it onto the couch. 

"Does he --"

Mr. Hansen gives you a look, conveying how much your father would have objected to letting you know just how sick he was. 

Then Mr. Hansen gone to the break in his case, and you bring your father a hot water bottle. He is, in fact, as irritated as Mr. Hansen would have guessed, but you sit with him. You hold his hand and help him to the bathroom when he needs to vomit and help him back to bed afterwards and tuck the hot water bottle under his aching legs. You fix him a little soup in a mug and leave it by his bed; you bring him Lucozade. You sit with him for a long time, reading him every article from the sport section, trailing off in the middle of an article about the start of the season in Football League Two when you see he is asleep. You don't move from your seat for a while. You just watch him sleep and breathe; you see the new gray in his hair, the sharp edges to his face that you've never seen before. His shoulders were massive to you as a child, and they continued to be massive even after you were grown -- now, they are hollowing. 

You leave the room before your weeping wakes him. 

...

At half past eight, Chuck shows up with dinner, Afghani food from the place down the way, and the two of you eat in complete and absolute silence. 

At nine thirty, you make sure Stacker is comfortable, then go back outside. You leave the door open in case he needs you, and Chuck is sitting on the couch with the television showing _Horizons_. Dinosaurs, scraping out the inside of bones. Newt is probably watching this, and you slide onto the couch. 

Chuck puts his arm around you, and you lean against his shoulder. 

The two of you still haven't said a word to each other all evening.

...

At fifteen, Chuck was the first person you kissed. 

At nineteen, Chuck was the first person you had sex with. He took the train to Cambridge for a weekend, and the two of you went back to your room that night. He was drunk; you were a little tipsy, but sober enough to navigate the two of you back from the pub, and you sat him down on your bed. The bedside lamp was off, but the fairy lights you had strung under the shelves were on. You took him to a talk at the Rad because you thought he would like it, but it left him uneasy. At the pub, too, people kept bumping into him; he kept almost shoving them back. 

Now, it's just the two of you. His overnight bag is on the floor next to your dresser, and because there is nowhere else to sit, Chuck sits down on the bed. You ask him whether he's kissed anyone since you. 

"Plenty," he said, but when you take off your shirt and slide into his lap and see the way he looks at you, feels his hands on your waist, you know, quite clearly, that he is lying. 

It was all right. You hadn't kissed anyone else, either. 

...

Afterwards, the two of you were tucked into your too-narrow bed. The fairy lights were on, and it was late. You were on your side, back tucked against the wall; Chuck was halfway off the bed, and he had his left hand tucked next to your hip, and his right over your sternum. He asked after your continuing dreams: what was he up to? You told him that he and his Dad left Los Angeles after killing a monster that had six legs and spines and was three hundred feet tall. They were heading back to Sydney, and Chuck turned his head a little and laughed into your hair, then kissed you again. The position wasn't comfortable; the two of you didn't fit into the bed.

On the other hand, both of you were nineteen. Both of you thought maybe it was love. 

...

Chuck is working a high-end auto theft case in which expensive cars are being stolen from custom-bit underground Mayfair garages. Clean jobs, quick jobs, professional jobs, no efforts to push into the multimillion pound houses inside: you take together some algorithms that dig through patterns and cross-index traffic lights and flow. Raleigh spends a lot of time driving Chuck around, and you don't see much of him. He doesn't see much of you. 

In the end, it's a combination of things: your narrowing analysis, Chuck's dogged, anger-driven persistence. Raleigh's quick thinking in the field. It ends with the two of them in an underground car park with a man wanted on three continents, holding a gun on Chuck. Raleigh tackles him from behind and saves Chuck's life. 

There are a lot of forms to file.

...

There are a _lot_ of forms to file. 

You go home to Stacker's for the weekend and sleep in your childhood bed. You go with him to the barber's in the morning, and at the end, the old man who has been cutting Stacker's hair for decades asks if you'd like to come up onto the chair: when you were little and came with Stacker here, they'd always put you in the chair, pretend to cut your hair, and then tell you to close your eyes and hold out your hand. When you opened your eyes, there would always be a sweet from the tin by the register. Now, you sit in the corner and work your way through copies of _The Voice_ from two weeks before and three pieces of candy -- the first piece is blue for old time's sake, but it's actually fairly disgusting, so you pick lime for the second and orange for the third. 

The weather is warm and clear, turning to spring, and Stacker runs out of breath halfway home. He says he wants to sit and look at the boats go by, but you see how heavily he sits down, how his chest heaves. You sit next to him, and that Sunday, it's you and Stacker and Mr. Hansen, eating quietly. 

You have a quiet talk with Mr. Hansen afterwards in the hallway, and he tells you what your father doesn't want to have to tell you.

...

There are a _lot_ of forms to fill in, and when they're in, when the post-incident briefings and debriefings have been done, when Chuck has submitted his final report and is back to his preferred diet of murders and violent robberies and organized crime, when Raleigh is back to looking over smashed-in Peugeot windows, the three of you go to your usual wine bar. It's the corner booth all the way in the back; you're sitting between them. 

After an hour and a half of Raleigh and Chuck being sullenly, steadily silent with each other, you drain the rest of your glass (a terrible red that you don't even remember ordering), touch Raleigh's shoulder, and put your hand on Chuck's knee. You announce you're going home. 

They look at each other, then follow you out. 

...

When you get back to your flat, they're still trailing you, so you hang up your coat, then his coat, then his coat, and you put the kettle on. You put Danger into the bathroom; she complains and flicks her tail, but you come out into the room and strip off your shirt and skirt and tights and shoes. Raleigh is in front of you; Chuck is behind you, and Chuck touches the small of your back. Raleigh touches your waist. Both of their hands are colder than your skin, but three of you settle on the bed in that configuration, Raleigh in front of you, Chuck behind, all three of you kneeling. Your legs are tucked up against Chuck's. 

Then, a surprise: Raleigh leans over your shoulder, hesitates for a moment, then kisses Chuck. 

You're even more surprised when Chuck not only leans into it, but brings his hand to the back of Raleigh's neck. 

... 

Here is what happens after you put Danger into the bathroom, after you and Chuck and Raleigh come home from the wine bar, after Chuck and Raleigh survive a man with a gun intent on putting a bullet into one or both of their heads: you watch Chuck and Raleigh kiss. Raleigh pulls Chuck's tongue into his mouth, and Chuck makes a noise in his throat. You can feel Chuck getting hard against your back. You unbutton Raleigh's shirt and help him out of it; Chuck gets his belt off and his trousers down. Then, you loop an arm around around Raleigh's waist and pull him flush against you, so that he can feel every time Chuck pushes against you. Every time you touch Raleigh's dick, his breath hitches. 

Chuck reaches behind him into the night stand, and you hear the sound of a latex glove being pulled out of a box, then, the coolness of lube on the inside of your thighs. Raleigh's eyes go wide when he realizes that Chuck is -- 

"How many fingers do you need?" 

You think for a moment, then say, "Three." 

It's been a while since you've done this. You loop your arms around Raleigh's neck, so that your chest is pressed against his, so close that you have to sync your exhale to his inhale. It's been more than a while. You focus on breathing while Chuck slips one finger inside you, then two, then a pause while he puts more lube on his fingers. You keep your knees apart as wide as Raleigh's are -- it's wider than comfortable for you, but you like the feeling of his body pressed against you, and he does too. He is starting to hold his breath. 

When Chuck gets the condom on and pushes in, it hurts, in the old, familiar, comforting way. 

Raleigh's cheeks are flushed. "What can I -- "

For an answer, you kiss him and take his wrist and put his hand between your legs. 

...

Raleigh comes, heat and wetness on your stomach. You come and pull his thumb away from your clit -- he had two fingers inside you, too, and after you raise his wrist, you lick the thumb clean, then pull the index and middle fingers into your mouth, sucking them down to the palm. 

Chuck sees this and makes a low, desperate noise. He braces one arm against Raleigh, slides his other arm around your waist and holds you against him. You rock back against his thighs, and you have Raleigh's fingers in your mouth.

Chuck says your name, over and over, while he comes. 

...

When you were --

...

When you were nine, Mako, your mother tried to leave your father. There had been abuse for years, and she made her preparations in secret: somehow, he guessed. Alternatively, it was sheer bad luck. He came home early on the day, and he found her in the bedroom, suitcase open and you already dressed, sitting on the bed with blue coat with new red shoes in your lap. Your mother was using them to bribe you to silence and secrecy and cooperation. Your father took one look at you, sitting there, happy, oblivious, then turned on his heel and went to the kitchen and came back with a knife. 

Your mother opened the bedroom window and pushed you through. You fell into the bushes, and through the window, she screamed for you to run. You hesitated. She screamed at you again, and you saw your father drag her back by her hair. The window was open, and your father had never used a knife on anyone before. This was how Stacker found you, blood over your front: not just your mother's, but also your fathers, because after killing her, your father turned his knife on himself. Looking through the window, you watched him do it. You saw. You felt. 

At home, your family spoke a mix of Japanese and English. For years, you called Stacker _sensei_ because you couldn't bear to think of this man you loved, who protected you, who would never intentionally hurt or frighten you as either _dad_ or _chichi_.

When Chuck was ten, his sexual predator of an uncle decided to take up with his nephew who admired policemen in general and him in particular. 

...

In this universe, for you and Chuck, the _kaiju_ are human: two arms, two legs, eyes and ears and noses, living on in memory for decades. Despite your father, you love Raleigh in a simple, easy way and Chuck in a complicated, difficult way. Despite what his uncle did to him, Chuck is a Metropolitan officer, and he has also accepted that he wants men sometimes and women other times. 

Sometimes, apparently, if it's you and Raleigh, both men and women together. 

...

You wake in the morning and disentangle yourself from arms and legs and torsos. It's a gray day outside, a little cool, and you go to the bathroom, open the door so that Danger can leave the bathroom if she wants, and you take a shower. 

When you come out of the shower, Danger is curled up in the bathroom sink, and nobody is in the bed: hair still wet, you pull a t-shirt on and go into the kitchen. Raleigh is leaning with his back against the narrow strip of wall between the sink and the window, and Chuck is on his knees in front of Raleigh. He kisses the inside of Raleigh's thigh, puts his hands on Raleigh's knees, and starts to suck him off. Chuck's eyes are closed, and his face tight with concentration. You watch the way Raleigh strokes Chuck's hair, touches Chuck's shoulders, makes noises of appreciation and doesn't try to push more of himself into Chuck's mouth than he is willing to take at the moment. You recognize all of this from when you've gone down on Raleigh. 

After a while, you put your hand between your legs. You go on watching, and after he is done with Raleigh and has rinsed his mouth out in the sink, Chuck comes over to you and gets down on his knees again. 

...

Raleigh, a little reluctant, has to be talked into coming to family breakfast with you and Chuck. 

...

Stacker is having a good day. His energy level is relatively good, and Mr. Hansen took him down to the barbershop early in the morning. You think Mr. Hansen may have slept over the night before: there is a neatly folded blanket on the couch that isn't usually there. 

"A long time ago," Stacker says, softly, "I made you a promise."

The two of you are in the hallway leading from the bedrooms to the dining room, and Mr. Hansen is in the kitchen at the stove. Raleigh is holding the platter onto which slices of bacon are being put, and someone has thoughtfully pulled Stacker's chair out already for him, so that he would be able to sit down easily. You would have suspicions of Chuck, except he appears to be absorbed in looking up football scores on his mobile -- your eyes fill with tears, and once Stacker is settled, you kiss Stacker on the cheek. You breathe in the way he smells like the hospital where he spends hour after hour, but he also smells like the comfort and love. Do you also smell cold sea water for a moment? Sometimes, even after all these years, you have nightmares and remember monsters. 

He sees the tears in your eyes and touches your arm. Raleigh and Mr. Hansen come in from the kitchen, Mr. Hansen still wearing an apron and holding a fish slice. Without looking up from his mobile, Chuck asks if the coffee is ready yet. 

...

You are Mako Mori, and for this Sunday morning, at least, you are happy. You have everyone you love, and they have you. Why would it matter that there are other universes? 

 

“we have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. we have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, i think, to be an organ and a blade. but, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. we make horrible mistakes. it’s how we learn. we breathe love. it’s how we learn. and it is inevitable.”

— Nayyirah Waheed

**Author's Note:**

> Written while listen to [Sights by London Grammar](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to9RqLqiGP0&feature=kp), which also supplied the title. 
> 
> Also, yeah, in my minds, this is totally a Hot Dads universe. 
> 
> [harrietvane](http://harrietvane.tumblr.com) and [perscitia](http://perscitia.tumblr.com) performed noble tasks in the face of my COLOSSAL AMERICAN IGNORANCE of anything that isn't American. All remaining London inaccuracies are my own. Everything I think I know about how the Met works comes from watching Luther and reading [Rivers of London](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_of_London_\(novel\)) at perscitia's recommendation.
> 
> Also also, God bless [the anon who spotted a bunch of typos](http://quigonejinn.tumblr.com/post/78512806033/hello-you-have-some-errors-in-what-you-are-made-of).


End file.
